Bharti Airtel, Idea fall up to 7% on launch of Reliance JioPhone; RIL up 2%

Reliance Jio plans to woo a large part of the 650 million feature phone customers who mostly use voice

Shares of telecom services provider Idea Cellular (down 7% to Rs 88.40) and Bharti Airtel (down 4% at Rs 404) have dipped up to 6% on BSE in intra-day trade after Reliance Jio, a telecom subsidiary of Reliance Industries (RIL), launched a feature phone. At 12:04 pm; RIL was up 2% at Rs 1,560, after hitting an over nine-year high of Rs 1,588, up 4%, in early morning trade.

Widgets Magazine

On the JioPhone, voice will always be free and will give them access to unlimited data on the JioPhone, said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, RIL.

"Reliance Jio phone will be available for Rs 0 for all Indians. To protect against misuse of the free Jio phone offer we plan to collect a fully refundable, one-time, security deposit of Rs 1,500 with every Jio phone," he added.